


What Matters More

by TimeSorceror



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Baking, Broken Ovens, Cookies, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Seems to be a theme with me lately
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-30 23:01:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8552917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TimeSorceror/pseuds/TimeSorceror
Summary: It wasn’t something that many people knew, even among his friends, but Anders desperately loved to make cookies.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Anyone who follows me on tumblr or has liked the original post I wrote this on knows the origins of why I wrote this story. But for you here at home, TL;DR: the family oven broke, and I - the resident holiday cookie maker in the house - was very upset about it. 
> 
> This is the result. (Oh, this version of Thedas has no magic btw, but humans, elves, dwarves, etc. are still a thing.)

It wasn’t something that many people knew, even among his friends, but Anders desperately loved to make cookies. 

Not fancy ones, really, or even different kinds. He loved making sugar cookies with sprinkles and buttercream frosting in different colors. When he’d been with Karl during his years in that Maker-forsaken, Chantry-run med school, money was always stretched thin. But they had always found enough to purchase the ingredients for an entire double batch of them and they’d make them together the day before First Day. 

And even after Karl had gotten sick and their med school “health insurance” refused to pay for even half of Karl’s medicine costs… he kept making them.

Because they reminded him of happier times. They reminded him that the entire First Day season was less about all the songs, lights, and the entire competitive gift-giving circus it had become, but that it was supposed to be about being together with people you loved and appreciating that you were all still alive to be together. 

…and there were some things about Andraste in there too, but it had been awhile since he’d been able to remember what they were.

“Hawke,” Anders sighed deeply, “just… let it go. I’m pretty sure that whole… burnt bit there means that there’s no fixing this. It’s electrical, not mechanical.“

It didn’t look like he was going to be making those cookies this year, though. His oven had called it quits about a month ago, but he was still serving his residency at a nearby clinic and it didn’t pay much. Just enough for his monthly loan payments, rent, and other necessities. He couldn’t afford to replace it.

Anders had hoped that maybe Hawke could help him fix it, but all the Youtube videos they’d watched hadn’t prepared them for what they found when they’d pulled the thing from the wall, which was a dark brown burn stain around what looked like the igniter cable, though the cable itself looked like it was fine.

“Damn,” Hawke swore. “Yeah, this… this is something else, Anders. I’m… I’m so sorry man.” The handsomely burly man currently sitting on his kitchen floor, hands covered in dirt and grease, looked up at Anders where he stood leaning morosely against one of the counters, and he offered a defeated, sympathetic smile.

“Hey, I’ll hook it back up to the gas so that you’ve still got the use of your stove at least,” he offered, to which Anders nodded in thanks.

“Thank you so much, Hawke. Sorry if I wasted your time…”

Hawke waved him off as he connected the stove’s clock back to the electricity. “Nah, I got time to spare. I was glad to come over and try to help you out. What else are friends for, right? Say, when the Deep Roads Expedition starts doing some good business, Varric and I’ll buy you a new oven. That’s a promise.” Anders chuckled.

“No need to break the bank on my account,” he shot back. “I mean it. I can survive the last couple of years of my residency without an oven. I don’t even use it all _that_ often…”

He helped Hawke shove the offending appliance back into place.

“Yeah, but…” Hawke sighed, mussing up his hair and rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, “I know what you do use it for… and I know that stuff’s important to you. Seriously, I’ll find a way to get you an oven, like, stat.”

He grinned, and looked at Anders expectantly like a dog who’d just performed a neat trick.

“Get it? Stat? Cause you’re a doctor?”

“Ugh, Hawke. You’re terrible.”

“I aim to please.”

“Uh huh, right.” Anders said, rolling his eyes. “Now go home and take a shower or something before we meet up for game night later. Otherwise Aveline might have to arrest you for assaulting an officer or something.”

“You sure you’re gonna be okay?” Hawke had been putting on his coat and was halfway out the door of his apartment before turning around.

Anders sighed. 

“Yeah. I’ll be fine… I promise. I mean, they’re just… just cookies. It’s not a big deal. You can get them anywhere.” He tried to sound nonchalant, but he knew that Hawke wasn’t really buying it since Anders couldn’t seem to pick his eyes up from off the damn floor. 

The man seemed to understand though and clapped Anders on the back, briefly squeezing him into a tight hug.

“Well if you say you’ll be fine, I believe you. But don’t hesitate to give me a call if you want to come and help Mom and Bethy do some baking, alright? I’m sure they’d love an extra set of helping hands, you know, since Carver and I are so useless.” He pulled his scarf off of the nearby holder and fastened it around his neck. “Well, I guess I’ll go take that shower now. Don’t want to have to have my mother bailing me out of jail for being smelly!”

And so Hawke left with a wink and a wave, and Anders sighed again as he closed his apartment door to go find wherever Pounce was hiding and bring him to bed for a nap.

Knickerweasels, was he glad he had the day off.

* * *

Fenris had almost forgotten about their weekly game night.

So it wasn’t until late in the evening that he arrived at the Deep Roads Expedition, the restaurant and bar that his friends Varric and Hawke had started up together to try and breathe some new life into the lackluster pickings that was Kirkwall’s culinary scene. It was still very new, and could potentially be a failed business venture in the end, but Varric was confident that their selection of food, drinks, and a little bit of decent marketing would make it a success.

And Fenris had little doubt that, given a few years, this little project of theirs would make them a decent chunk of change. They’d somehow managed to hire Isabela as their head chef, and Fenris was enamored with her cooking. As was a small but steadily growing portion of Kirkwall’s population of foodies and critics. And the atmosphere was good. 

For all that Fenris wasn’t fond of Merrill, the too-perky-for-her-own-good elf that Hawke was dating, he had to admit she was a skilled interior decorator.

But he had made it at last, tugging his woolen coat around him just a little bit tighter to fend off the chill. As he entered, the bell above the door rang, and the others who had made it out for their little gathering were sitting at their usual table, enjoying a few beers and some of Isabela’s appetizers. 

On the house, of course.

Varric, who had the clearest line of sight on the door, stood up from his chair and waved, a devilish grin on his face.

“Hey Broody! You made it! We almost weren’t sure you were coming…”

“As if I’d miss out on a free meal, Varric.” He replied, pulling up a chair next to the dwarf. He looked around at their companions, and he noticed there were a few missing.

“Where are the others?” he asked, noting that both Sebastian’s and Anders’ chairs were curiously unoccupied. Varric glanced at the spots that Fenris had gestured to, shrugging.

“Choir Boy’s busy helping the Chantry prepare for the First Day services or something, and Blondie was called in for an emergency at the clinic where he works. Said he was going to try and make it, but not to hold out for him.” 

“Poor Anders,” a soft voice chimed in. Hawke’s younger sister Bethany walked in from the restrooms, sitting down between Varric and her brother with a sigh. “That man works so hard for so little. He was supposed to have the day off too, but he loves that clinic to bits, you know?”

Beside her, Hawke swallowed a bite of whatever he’d been eating and nodded.

“And on top of that, we determined this morning that it looks like his oven’s pretty much shot. Some kind of electrical short. He looked so defeated when I left earlier, even though I offered to let him come over to help you and Mom do some baking before First Day.”

Fenris frowned. “Why would he be upset? An oven can be replaced, can it not?” 

“Not in time for First Day,” Merrill piped, her usual enthusiasm tempered by an uncharacteristic melancholy. “And, as I understand it, baking is a very personal thing for Anders. You all know that he makes those lovely sugar cookies every year before First Day? He told me once that makes them in honor of a lover he lost when he was in medical school. It must be killing him to know that he can’t make them without asking to borrow someone’s oven.”

Beside Donnic, Aveline hummed in agreement.

“I used to make apple pies with Wesley for Satinalia. After he died, I kept making them, because it helped make the loss easier to bear. But shortly after I transferred here I couldn’t find enough of the right kind of apples for the filling. It almost ruined my Satinalia…”

“…but I heard you needed some from one of the other officers and I happened to have just what you needed, didn’t I, darling?” Donnic added, and Aveline smiled. Fenris rather thought it changed her face immensely, her smile. Made her look less intimidating.

“Oh, come on you two,” Varric groused, “I thought we all agreed on a no mushy stuff rule during game nights.”

“I don’t remember that,” came Isabela’s sultry voice from the kitchen door as she removed her apron and drug Hawke’s brother Carver along with her.

“I’m fairly certain that mushy stuff is totally a thing we allow, right?”

“I think you’re confusing mushy with tushie, Bela,” Hawke teased, and Isabela grinned. “Hmm. Well, maybe that was it. Tushie stuff is always better, anyway.”

“Hey, what’s this about tushie stuff? I didn’t miss anything good, did I?”

At the front of the restaurant the door bell was ringing and Anders was squeezing past the door as it closed. He looked… quite worn down, actually. Fenris frowned. He and the blonde hadn’t really gotten along when they first met, but he’d never hated him. And now it bothered Fenris somewhat to see the usually jovial young doctor so… depressed. 

The man seemed to be making quite the effort to not let it show, though.

“No, no, of course not darling,” Isabela purred. “Glad you could make it!”

“And miss a free meal? Never.”

“Funny,” Varric mused, “Broody said the same thing. What is it they say about great minds?” 

Anders seemed a little surprised for a moment before shrugging and walking around the table to sit next to Fenris. “Yes, yes, that great minds think alike. But there’s more to that saying that most people don’t know, you know.”

“And that fools seldom differ?” Fenris piped up.

Again, Anders simply stared at him, blinking owlishly for a moment before turning to the appetizers on the table to fill his plate with food. 

“Ah, yes. Well, you’ve never really been “most people”, have you?”

Anders offered him a small, sad smile, and Fenris felt his heart break a little. Anders was hiding a great deal of hurt from everyone else, though only Fenris seemed able to see it. It seemed cruel that such sadness could make the man so beautiful, to play on Fenris’ begrudging attraction to him and enhance it to the point where it was almost to painful to look at.

Fenris decided then that he was going to do something for Anders, though he didn’t quite know what. However, once he remembered the recent tragedy that had befallen the young doctor halfway through a game of Wicked Grace, he suddenly knew just the thing.

* * *

A few nights later, Anders sat curled up on his couch, Ser Pounce at his feet, his laptop resting on a pillow nestled between his legs. Most of the apartment was dark except for the hall and the little light above his stove in the kitchen, not counting the glow of the laptop as it displayed his latest Netflix addiction in fullscreen across his face.

He found it difficult to be anything close to festive tonight. No oven meant no cookies, and he found that even with Hawke’s invitation, it just wasn’t the same. He liked the man, had once liked him enough that he’d considered asking him out for a date… though that was before he’d learned that he was with Merrill.

So instead of going clubbing with Isabela and her friends or out to Hawke’s for the party he was surely having tonight, he’d elected to stay inside with his cat and try to forget about how much a little thing like not being able to bake cookies with his own oven bothered him. He sighed, pulling Pounce from his place at Anders’ feet and placing him by his side, hoping that the cat would stay. Miracle of miracles, the cat did, and Anders felt a little better having the warm body nestled against him as he sipped some cocoa in the dark of his apartment, watching Netflix.

That was when the knock sounded at his door.

Anders startled a little, which jostled Pounce, though he didn’t stir from his place on the couch.

Curious, Anders paused his show and moved the laptop and its pillow off his lap so that he could go to the door to investigate… only to be surprised to find Fenris standing on the other side when he checked the peephole to see who it was. Stunned, he opened the door, and was even more surprised to see the white-haired elf holding a box of frozen pizza and a grocery bag with what looked like… ingredients for something. 

“Um… hello?” He greeted, just a touch awkwardly. Fenris really wasn’t the sort to just… show up at someone’s place. He had to be here for a reason.

“Hello, Anders. May I come in?”

“I… um… sure. Yes, come in.”

He ushered the elf inside, immediately closing the door behind him. 

“So… uh. What brings you here, exactly? Why didn’t, ah… you call or, or… something.” Anders frowned. He couldn’t seem to get his words to work right.

Fenris just offered him a small smile. 

“I’m afraid I didn’t know your number. Though, perhaps I could’ve called Hawke or Varric and asked… but it didn’t occur to me until just now.”

Anders nodded slowly. “Yes, right. Well… what’s with the food?”

“I… heard from Hawke last week that your oven had stopped working. And then Merrill… she told us about how much you love making those cookies everyone likes so much and… that you probably felt terrible that you couldn’t use your own oven to do so this year. Anyway…” 

The elf shuffled in place, suddenly quite interested in Anders’ carpet.

“Anyway, the oven at my place doesn’t work either. Hasn’t, really, since I started living there. And I could probably replace it, but… the place isn’t mine, exactly… and the person it used to belong to isn’t someone I care for much. So, well… I’ve gotten good at using the stovetop for a lot of things. One of those things just so happened to be making cookies, and… I thought I’d show you how.”

Anders let out a soft, strangled sob.

“Oh, Fenris, I… I don’t…” 

He felt tears welling up in his eyes and he tried to wipe them away before they fell, but it was too late. Then, once he started he found it difficult to stop, and the fact that Fenris was standing in front of him no longer seemed to matter other than that Anders found the elf’s bizarre desire to help him so touching it made the tears flow anew every time he thought about it.

And then he felt a hand gingerly patting his back as it led him to the small table in his kitchen and helped him to sit down. 

Next thing he knew, he was being handed a cup of cocoa and a tissue and Fenris was sitting next to him and frowning in what looked like worry. Anders sniffled loudly as he wiped the tears away, slowly this time.

“I’m… I’m sorry. You must think me such a mess.”

“Not at all. You’re under a lot of stress, and sometimes it gets to a person. Though, in light of this development, perhaps I should’ve brought some ice cream instead of pizza.”

Anders couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him.

“Oh! Oh ho… you… you know I think that there’s a Baskin Robbins down the street that’s open ‘til ten. If we go right now we could probably get some tubs of the stuff to go.”

“Would you like that, then? I can still show you how to make the cookies afterwards.” Fenris’ voice was such a lovely rich baritone, Anders thought. It seemed to help soothe the ache in his heart even more than the promise of cookies or ice cream.

“I… I certainly wouldn’t turn it down. Not with such a handsome elf as you offering it to me, at least.”

Fenris’ ears twitched and Anders could see the beginnings of what looked like a full-body blush creeping up from beneath his black turtleneck.

“Shall we go? I need to put some of the ingredients in your fridge, if you have room. And the pizza in the freezer.”

“Yes, go ahead, there’s plenty of room. But, ah… Fenris?”

“Yes?” The elf turned to Anders as he began putting away some of the ingredients he’d brought with him, ears pricked as he listened intently for whatever Anders had to say next.

“So is this… is this a date, or something?”

Fenris abruptly closed the freezer after putting away the pizza, once more suddenly very interested in the floor as he fiddled with the buttons on the wool coat he had on over his turtleneck. 

“I, um, well… I suppose. If you want it to be, yes.”

Anders stood up, fixing the chairs’ placement as he did so.

“Well, if it’s a date then… do I get a kiss at the end of the night?”

Fenris’ ears twitched again and the blush that had begun forming underneath his turtleneck was rapidly claiming everything else above it. But he’d managed to stop staring at the floor and had finally met Anders’ gaze for the first time that night.

“I am… not entirely familiar with how dating customs work exactly in the Free Marches, but if a kiss is generally what’s expected at the end of a date, then… yes, perhaps I can part with one. Or two. As many as you like.”

He offered a hand to Anders, who took it immediately. It felt like ice, and Anders made a mental note to lend him a pair of gloves so that his fingers didn’t freeze.

“I like the sound of that,” he said.

And as the two of them walked down the street, holding hands and huddling for warmth, the ache in Anders’ chest lifted. It didn’t matter anymore if they didn’t get to making those cookies tonight, or even tomorrow night; they’d get to it eventually. What mattered more was that now he had someone to share the experience with again, and hopefully would be able to continue to share it with for a long time to come.

**Author's Note:**

> And now I am thoroughly drowning in my own fluff. Good lord. I said I was writing this to work through my problems, but I never expected it to work, yeah? (Also, a thing happened: a friend is recommending our family to KSBJ's Giving Tree, which is a local radio station's way of helping families in need during the holidays. So a new oven might happen for us before Christmas after all, but we'll have to see.)
> 
> Anyway, I am something of the opinion that Carver isn't as useless at baking as Hawke says he is. 
> 
> (He just doesn't want his brother to know.)
> 
> Also, I have no idea what this Fenris does for a living. Could be anything, really. Although I like to think that he's going to school for a degree in something while he does odd jobs to pay for food and necessities. He doesn't pay rent for wherever he lives (because he sort of got it from a certain someone illegally), but no one has noticed this yet so he's determined to continue living there until they do.


End file.
